Wei-Nian CHAN

EDHEC Business School

“A values-driven engineer on a constant search for transformation in the energy transition.”

Hometown: Singapore

Fun fact about yourself: When I was finishing up my engineering degree, I participated in an internship and, at the same time, was president of my school’s jazz band and played guitar at events and weddings. This led to two job offers after graduation: one as an engineer and another for a full-time gig at a local bar with a band. Up until this point, I never thought about pursuing one or the other, I just did both. The experience led me to evaluate the boundaries between my work and personal lives more closely. It set me on the right path to choosing engineering as my career focus, and music and a passionate hobby.

Undergraduate School and Degree: National University of Singapore, Bachelor of Chemical Engineering

Where was the last place you worked before enrolling in business school? I was a chemical engineer on Bukom, a small island a few miles offshore from Singapore. I worked at a Shell chemical facility, one of the largest in Singapore, and the site of a famous 19th Century counter-attack against Rockefeller’s Standard Oil monopoly in Asia. This facility also played an essential role in boosting Singapore’s post-WWII economic growth. Needless to say, I was excited to join the Bukom Island team with Shell, and I had many dreams about how to change Big Oil for the better. I spent my first few years at the facility wandering through its maze of pipes, pumps and furnaces. I was also working with some fantastic people. They included a veteran production floor technician who was born on Bukom and saw it transform from a sleepy fishing village to a world-class chemical facility (and who could find any valve in the plant with his eyes closed). I also worked with aspiring Dutch technology teams tinkering with the latest reaction chemistry to achieve product circularity. I learned about energy and the petrochemical roots of many of our daily essentials and had the opportunity in my last role to develop projects pivoting Bukom to decarbonized products and zero-emission energies. It was on Bukom that my passion for energy and the transition to more sustainable resources flourished, and it was also where I decided to pursue an MBA to develop new businesses in the sustainable energy sector.

Where did you intern during the summer of 2024? EDHEC is a 10-month MBA program comprising multiple live business cases with partner companies, but it does not include an internship within the curriculum.

Where will you be working after graduation? I will take my energy transition journey to the next level by becoming a decarbonized energy entrepreneur. The industry and problem of decarbonization itself have a deep and wide value chain network that can be difficult to understand, especially when you think you are solving one problem but it ends up causing another one! Having developed strategic roadmaps at Shell as a MNC and Singapore as a global financial and energy hub, I have the advantage of understanding how disruptive innovation can impact markets, economies and the environment. EDHEC’s strategy and entrepreneurial courses have enabled me to sharpen some of my ideas, which I am excited to bring to the marketplace. I believe the focus on startups and small businesses at this stage of my career will complement my previous experience in a large manufacturing organization and help me become a more complete and effective change-maker and leader in energy transition.

Community Work and Leadership Roles in Business School: There is a wide variety of student activities at EDHEC for MBAs and the rest of the student body, and it was difficult to choose! While I was initially attracted to outdoor activities that would allow me to discover the natural beauty of the region, I decided to create the first EDHEC Spouse, Partner and Family Inclusion Hub. The EDHEC Global MBA directors have embraced the project, and they have supported me in creating pioneering events and activities for families and partners who come to Nice. The group has participated in cultural events such as wine tastings and trips to the nearby mountains. Moving forward, we want to grow this hub to become a network and community to help the family and partners even after their time in France.

Which academic or extracurricular achievement are you most proud of during business school? One key feature of business school is the opportunity and training to participate in business cases – I was fortunate to participate and lead a variety of them as part of the curriculum as well as outside of school. These included top placings in EDHEC’s Paris Hackathon Challenge and developing financing solutions to adjust a regional bank’s sustainability-linked-loan offerings as part of our Sustainability Impact Challenge.

Still, the one that stands out would have to be the Monaco Ocean Protection Challenge. This annual international business case challenge focuses on raising awareness and finding innovative solutions to conserving our planet and its oceans. It was especially memorable because this challenge would never have been on my radar if not for trusted friends and teammates, whom I have made from participating in previous cases. They discovered the competition and pulled me in. As it turned out, we crafted an amazing idea to enter the shipping market and decarbonize it from Monaco. It was a serendipitous path to developing a project for sustainability that helped me realize new opportunities and avenues to make decarbonization profitable and practical from a business perspective.

What achievement are you most proud of in your professional career? I was a process engineer in my previous life, delivering value by modifying equipment, improving processes with operators, and introducing automation or optimization control models. I will always be proud of the structural savings in energy and emissions that may be a small percentage of the plant, but amounts to massive absolute amounts of savings equaling the emissions of entire countries like Monaco. However, I am most proud of the projects I completed in the energy transition space. When I worked at Shell, I was part of a team that used hydrogen fuel cells to decarbonize an industrial RO-RO harbor craft. This was a demonstration of effective partnerships between institutional players, MNCs, and local SMEs with a common goal to make hydrogen a reality for shipping. Not only did we commission a fully operational hydrogen vessel safely, we also made practical recommendations to safety standards and effective adoption of known hydrogen practices from the petrochemicals sector to the nascent hydrogen shipping sector, which will help other hydrogen projects take off.

Why did you choose this business school? I considered a few options when choosing the school. It is always tricky since every school has its own unique offering, and rankings can also be misleading. This is especially true when they tend to reflect historical priorities and may not be relevant when thinking about what can help disruptive change in specific sectors like the energy transition. Since I already had a background operating in large MNCs and had also done some strategy work, I decided that I wanted to focus my MBA on learning more about developing SMEs and startups, especially with potential to transform a sector in need of change.

This was where I was pulled into the narrative of EDHEC to “Make an impact” motto. I appreciate the school’s small MBA class and the opportunity to work closely with professors and other students. EDHEC also offers great entrepreneurial programs that help founders make new connections and move forward with their startup projects. P&Q ranks EDHEC #1 for entrepreneurship, and I think the school deserves this ranking. From everything I have experienced, I am more convinced than ever that I made the right choice. I feel very well-prepared—in terms of strategy and profitability goals—to make real change in the energy sector.

Who was your favorite MBA professor? My favorite professor would be Dr Ghassan Paul Yacoub, our academic director and professor of our Artificial Intelligence for Business class. Every lecture has been an eye-opener with his unique mix of practical investment banking experience and a long and broad view from research and consulting. He showed us the importance of critically analyzing the strategy and performance of a company to immediately identify its key characteristics and pain points. That way, we can drive a meaningful debate in any boardroom, while also showing how to dig deep into key details that require scientific and data-driven insights that can justify pivoting an entire business as well as across a range of sectors and business models. He was also always available to chat about applying what we learn in the MBA to our futures. I enjoyed these chats and have been greatly influenced by his intellectual curiosity and inquisitiveness.

What was your favorite course as an MBA? My favorite course would be the Strategy course by Professor Karin Kollenz Quetard. I came into the class thinking it would be a 10,000-foot-high overview of corporate strategy. I was surprised by the grounded manner in which the class was carried out and the almost ruthless ways in which we drove ideas through frameworks and discarded them if they did not make sense. The result was a polished and logical view of strategy rooted in trends and real evidence. I also greatly appreciated the professor’s no-nonsense and high-pace style that culminated in an actual consulting case. Here, we worked in groups to develop a roadmap for a real estate startup and pitched it to their CEO and CTO. It was an incredibly educational and practical experience, and the course definitely changed my thinking about business.

What was your favorite MBA event or tradition at your business school? I was taken aback and charmed by the variety of events and traditions at the school, ranging from the celebrations of cultural events to more informal ones such as Mardi Gras or the more polished soiree during Christmas with a member of our EDHEC board. However, my favorite would be the team-building activities on the Mediterranean’s sunny islands and in the snowy mountains of the southern Alps near Nice. My class visited St Honnorat Island and then went to the Auron Ski Village in the Alps. Singapore has no mountains and a sea full of container ships. It was quite an experience to see how the school embraced the location of Nice and to have both the mountain snow and beach sunshine within 90 minutes of each other.

Looking back over your MBA experience, what is the one thing you’d do differently and why? This has been a fantastic experience, and the only thing I might have considered doing differently in hindsight would have been to incorporate it earlier in my career. As an engineer at heart, I thoroughly enjoyed the boots-on-the-ground experience at the work site, driving actual projects for tangible change. However, I see now that it would have been possible to insert an MBA experience earlier and still be able to come back in time to experience the same project development role that I had towards the end of my previous job. That could then have gone even further, along with the learning from the MBA, and led to a different path in my journey in the energy transition sector.

What is the biggest myth about your school? French schools can be a mystery in the English-speaking world, especially in Singapore, and one strange myth I have heard about EDHEC is that it is only good for Finance! Since coming to EDHEC, I think the myth is not entirely true. I have been regularly amazed by the quality of publications and teaching in financing, especially new fields such as sustainable finance. I’ve also been impressed with innovations and business such as Scientific Beta or Scientific Infra, which are leading startups pioneering the use of academic databases to support investment in the private and public sector for derisking sustainability-related assets. In addition, I am equally impressed by the level of engagement in all other fields at both academic and in particular, the practical tie-ups and collaborations with regional and global companies that help contextualize our business knowledge in an all-rounded way.

What did you love most about your business school’s town? EDHEC is in the City of Nice, in the South of France, sitting between the Mediterranean and the Alps. It is a haven for cyclists because of the 300 days of sunshine and countless epic rides that are accessible. For this, I have been fortunate to have been accepted into a local cycling team – Cavigal. Despite being completely foreign as the first Singaporean to have joined the club, they accepted me together with another MBA classmate as one of “Les Gars de MBA” (MBA Guys). We were riding together every Sunday on the many “Cols” (Hills) that feature in classic races in the cycling world and quaint centuries-old villages perched on hidden ridges in the mountain ranges hugging the coast. They also included me in various soirees with the club while struggling together with my stuttering level of kindergarten French. This camaraderie and warmth of the team reflects the character of the town and is what I love most about Nice.

What movie or television show best reflects the realities of business and what did you learn from it? Professional road-cycling is said to be akin to playing chess on the road. This never made much sense to me until I watched the Netflix series Tour de France – Unchained, and I feel this reflects the realities of business very well. Beyond the superhuman 21-day races, fancy bike sponsorships and the iconic finish at the Arc de Triomphe in Paris, the series perfectly illustrates the importance of tactics and strategy in achieving long-term success while balancing team goals and individual rider ambitions. This is critical because of the feature of drafting, whereby riders can choose to hide behind an opposition team while cycling close together to avoid losing energy from being in front facing the wind. Such profound interactive tactics have evolved over the years that greatly mimic how businesses also move when exploring both new and old areas of business. I learned that it is sometimes important to suffer the impact of fighting the wind to get a head start on the opponent at critical points of the race, as it is with first-movers in business. Still, it is equally important to know when to follow behind and conserve energy to the next key milestone as it is for businesses entering risky markets. 

What is one way that your business school has integrated AI into your programming? What insights did you gain from using AI? EDHEC has featured a one-day bootcamp for AI in the curriculum whereby we invited an AI startup founder from Sophia Antipolis, Europe’s largest technology park, to give an executive coaching course on using AI for research, business development and learning. It was a fully comprehensive session starting from a review of the technical developments, foundations and limitations of LLM, moving on to hands-on tips and exercises on maximizing the use of the most recent tools. This has fundamentally changed the way I prompt a LLM and organize my work and research. The most important insight I gained was where the limits of LLM are and how to discover them – the volume of content it can process and generate can mislead one to trust it almost out of convenience. That may be acceptable for certain use cases such as brainstorming or practical text editing, but understanding how the models worked helped me device ways to stress and verify it when the quality is needed.

Which MBA classmate do you most admire? Out of the many talented individuals in the cohort, I have particular admiration for our EDHEC MBA Clubhouse Treasurer – Nanami Sumiuchi. Nanami is a trusted team-mate in various case competitions; a partner in the MBA Clubhouse where we worked together to setup the inaugural EDHEC Spouse, Partner & Family Inclusion Hub; a silent but invariable leader of the MBA community supporting all the other hubs in the club as well as MBA activities; and an approachable friend in good times and bad. She is level-headed even in crisis and always brings a cheerful smile and determination to taking the team out of tight spots with pressing deadlines. Her achievements are all the more impressive considering how she left Tokyo and engaged in all the activities while being in a challenging MBA program in her non-native language. Perhaps what struck me in particular were the jam sessions we had practicing for the annual EDHEC Christmas dinner, where I discovered her multi-talented side as a pianist and contemporary dancer. I feel that she is a role model for all aspiring MBAs looking to step out of their comfort zone and take themselves to the next level.

What are the top two items on your professional bucket list? My top 2 items will be to develop and mature a disruptive business idea in the energy transition space, and to implement decarbonization transformation in the historical manufacturing site of Bukom in Singapore, where I first started my career, and bring it to its next chapter.

What made Wei Nian such an invaluable addition to the Class of 2025?

“Wei Nian has been a real asset to the Global MBA community as one of the top-performing students academically. He is always available to help and support his classmates academically and regularly provides ideas and feedback on the program. He is from Singapore and attended the prestigious NUS Engineering school, this gives him the rigor, organization, and unique perspective that he willingly contributes in class. As a Singaporean, he helps his classmates better understand Southeast Asian perspectives and learn from his experience in the modern business hub he calls home. Wei Nian also stands out because of his holistic view of the MBA experience, having initiated and led the Spouse/Partner/Family Club, which allows us to involve families in the challenge of taking an international MBA. Our cohorts are more experienced than most, with the average age being 33, this means we have more students with families than other MBA programs. Wei Nian helped us realize the importance of family – work-life balance in our MBA and made it happen.”

Sandra Richez
Director, EDHEC Global MBA

DON’T MISS: MBAS TO WATCH: CLASS OF 2025

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